Speaking in the spirit of the 99% since 1776, here are a few voices from America’s Long Revolution:
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“I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
—Thomas Jefferson, Founder and third President of the United States
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
— Fredrick Douglass
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
— U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (7 months after the Civil War ended)
“The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.”
— Helen Keller, 1911
“Now as through this world I ramble, I see lots of funny men, Some rob you with a six gun, And some with a fountain pen.”
— Woody Guthrie in “Pretty Boy Floyd”
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. President in April 29, 1938 message to Congress.
“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.”
— Martin Luther King
“Daddy, what I still don’t understand is how the rich people get so rich. They have to steal it from somebody else, right?”
— Ziggy Kinoshita, seven years old in Nov, 2011
“Congress shall make no law …. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
— United States Constitution
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers.”
— King James Bible, Matthew 21:12